Sautee the Brussels sprouts and set aside in a bowl. Sautee the onions, then dump in everything else including the sprouts. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until the potatoes are cooked all the way through, half hour or more?

The tomatoes were leftovers that I needed to get rid of. Doesn't really add that much flavor. I'd recommend leaving them out, or try 2-3 tomatoes to actually taste them.

All the recipes I read for soups using Brussels sprouts basically required pureeing the whole mess at some point, which wouldn't interest me even if I did have a food processor. I was hoping the sprouts would disintegrate a little bit when cooked for so long and make the broth interesting like broccoli. It didn't do that, but the sprouts didn't totally lose their flavor either, so when you bite into one, it still tastes like the sprout that you know and love (or else you wouldn't botther to try making this stuff).

I like salsa. I like oranges. I like garlic & onions. I thought the beer might make it interesting. When I put this together the first time (using Anaheim chiles because a chart at Meijer showed they were about the same intensity), I had what appeared to be a bowl full of chiles & onions floating in beer. I actually tried tortilla chips in it, because to me, salsa = what you dip chips in.

So I remembered that salsa actually means "sauce", and presumably the word is used for sauces other than chip dips among actual speakers of Spanish. So I used it to marinade a pork roast, and it turned out pretty decent. As leftovers, the chile flavor overpowered everything else. It tasted like pork-textured chiles.

Oh yeah, and the woman at Eckerd's pharmacy carded me when I bought the beer. Maybe because I was looking at all my options, considering whether to get a single 40 oz, not wanting to buy a six pack that would go untouched. Settled on a 24 oz of Miller High Life, my Uncle Fred's preferred brand. So she probably thought I was taking a conspicuous amount of time to consider all my options. After I was gone, I thought a better response might have been, "Instead of my driver's license, can I just show you the white hair in my beard to prove my age?" You have to lean close to see it, but it's there.

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